Failure to Diagnose

Recent Settlement for Failure to Diagnose an Infection

Attorney Fred Pritzker recently won a $950,000.00 settlement for a client who had a failure-to-diagnose claim against a doctor and hospital. Their client developed a severe infection a few days after having knee surgery. The infection went undiagnosed until the client developed septic arthritis. His future is uncertain, and he may need an amputation.

You can call 612-338-0202 to contact Fred and request a free medical malpractice consultation. Read more about this hospital infection settlement.

Failure to Diagnose Ischemic Stroke

“Failure to diagnose a stroke” means treatments that are available to reverse the effects of stroke are not administered in time. There are two kinds of stroke:

An ischemic stroke occurs when an artery that supplies blood and oxygen to the brain becomes blocked. About 80% of strokes are of this type. Blood clots are the most common cause of artery blockage that leads to an ischemic stroke.

Hemorrhagic stroke is caused by a blood vessel that breaks and bleeds into the brain.

The effects of ischemic strokes can be reversed with treatment. The treatments, however, must be administered within the first few hours of a stroke. If someone has an ischemic stoke and doctors fail to diagnose the stroke in time to administer the treatment, there may be a claim for malpractice.

Failure to Diagnose Heart Attack

Each year, 7 million people come to hospital emergency rooms (ER) complaining of chest pain or discomfort that suggest they might be having a heart attack. Approximately 26,000 patients with acute cardiac ischemia (ACI) are mistakenly discharged from ERs each year, despite the abundance of knowledge available about ACI.

Physicians and ER staff who have available (and properly use) the following technologies, within the first hour of a suspected heart attack, give the patient a much greater chance for survival and full recovery:

Acute cardiac ischemia time-insensitive predictive instrument software (ACI-TIPI): When ACI-TIPI is run simultaneously with conventional computerized electrocardiograph, it decreases the number of failures to diagnose heart attacks and prevents many unnecessary hospitalizations. In a recent study of the effectiveness of ACI-TIPI in the emergency room, failure to diagnose heart attack dropped from 31% all the way down to 2.2%.

Thrombolytic (blood clot dissolving) therapy: When thrombolytic therapy is done in the first hour after a heart attack, the likelihood of survival increases significantly.

Cardiac sestamibi scan: A sestamibi scan is a non-invasive, imaging test. The patient is injected with a radioactive compound technetium, bound to the chemical compound sestamibi, that flows through the heart and is monitored. The scan allows doctors to evaluate the heart’s pumping ability and gauge the amount of blood flow to the heart muscle. When the sestamibi scan is available in the ER, physicians are able to more accurately rule out suspected heart attacks.

Periprosthetic Joint Infection (PJI)

A periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) occurs during or following joint replacement surgery. The infection can cause the joint to be painful or cause the implant to loosen. In some cases the patient needs revision surgery. Periprosthetic joint infection, also known as “septic failure,” is one of the leading causes of total knee replacement and total hip replacement revision surgeries in the United States.

Most cases of periprosthetic joint infection involve Staphylococcus aureus (including Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)) and Staphylococcus epidermidis, commonly called staph infections. These infections can affect more than your joint. If Staphylococci bacteria get into your bloodstream, you may develop sepsis (blood poisoning), which can lead to septic shock — a life-threatening episode of extremely low blood pressure.

Ovarian Cancer

The standard of reasonable care is for a doctor to look at family history when a woman has symptoms of ovarian cancer. This is because ovarian cancer can be caused by genetic mutations of 2 genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2. These genes produce proteins that repair damaged DNA, thereby preventing tumor growth. The mutations prevent these repairs. The same mutations of the same genes can cause breast cancer.

This is common medical knowledge that your doctor should know. This genetic risk also makes your family’s medical history crucial to getting to a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.